by Liz

Miles : 43. Ascent : 817’.

After six delightful days mainly along the Nantes-Brest canal, today we should reach the Atlantic coast. The wild flowers along the canal edge have added daily colour, with quite a bit of variety from one day to the next – powder-blue sow thistle everywhere two days ago and delicate yellow agrimony making an appearance yesterday. I’ll spare you the long list of everyday flowers but my favourites have been gorgeous pale yellow toadflax, teasel and an eye catching bright pink plant I don’t recognise. Some stretches have had the added pleasure of rushes rustling in the wind.

The miles are surprisingly slow. It’s not been unusual to leave at 9 and arrive at 6 having only covered 45 miles. We’re using less battery than we did in America, without the big distances, ascents and having only four weeks instead of seven to pace ourselves over. We pause often to look at things, and are forever stopping to take photos. But what makes the biggest difference is the mostly off-road route, which is wonderful and about 100% safer than the Pacific Coast Highway was, but comes with stony, grassy, rutted surfaces and twisty-turny navigation, instead of smooth, sweeping roads. So we are happily adjusting to a slower pace and the bumpy-ride saddle soreness is beginning to ease. 

We were first in the queue for the free ferry across the Loire, wide and blue on this beautiful sunny morning. We stopped at a pharmacy on the way to ask for their best bite relief remedy. It wasn’t just us that feasted during last night’s dinner in the garden. The mozzies prefer Philip but are happy to settle for me if Philip’s surface area is fully booked.

We’re so impressed with the cycling infrastructure along this route, not only is it well signposted with cycle paths demarcated on every road, but in places long raised cycleways have been constructed, for example over marshy land. We were aware that today would have about 20 miles on roads and were braced for noise and traffic, but instead we were on quiet lanes that wound through sleepy French villages with cockerels crowing and the odd person pottering, as it was Saturday morning. We haven’t completely left the canals behind, and followed the Canal Maritime de Basse Loire then a series of culverts through coastal habitat. We saw a pair of kingfishers, a cormorant with a fish in its beak for elevenses, a family of long tailed tits and a coypu by the water’s edge. The path was lined with comfrey and tansy, and two buzzards were hunting overhead. There were no crops that I noticed but there were many fields of cows, one creamy herd munching from a hayrick, their bottoms all lined up and tails swishing. 

We are learning new French words like ludique (playful), côtoyer (to rub shoulders with) and abrutti (moron – thanks Kate 🙂). Today we passed signs including ‘Ramasser jonquilles interdit‘ (collecting daffodils is forbidden) and ‘Chasse gardé’ (private hunting?) Outside a home a sale of honey was advertised for 27th September between 9 and 12. Curious. We’re definitely not in England. 

Lunch was in Paimboeuf beside the Loire where we admired an exhibition of clever, characterful life size animals by Christian Champin, a sculptor who works with discarded metal (‘metalo-decheticien’).

As the Loire neared the Atlantic we rode past fishing huts on wooden stilts 100 yards out into the sea, a long, narrow, precarious wooden walkway leading to each, also supported on stilts. One hut was called Bout du Monde (World’s End). The huts have an interesting net system: when the net is lowered into the sea it fills up with plaice and mullet and is then raised for the catch. 

It was satisfying to reach our first glimpse of the ocean at Mindin. The tide was ebbing and people were quite far out on the sands. Our last few miles largely followed the coast, past small harbours and sandy beaches with holiday makers. We’re staying in a little cottage on a low cliff overlooking the sea, the sun shining to order and water and sky are blue this evening. We’ve had our first swim from a tiny beach shared with two neighbours, hundreds of mussels and a few oysters. Philip is cooking salmon and we are looking forward to our first rest day tomorrow.